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Brotherhood In The Scarlet Ibis And Of Mice And Men

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Brotherhood is known to be a loving and sentimental subject. But, nobody talks about how painful and wounding it can be. The stories “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst, “My Brothers Keepers” by Jay Bennet, and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, emphasize the betrayal of brotherhood. First, in “The Scarlet Ibis”, the narrator had taught his little brother Doodle how to walk and run. Doodle was born with a birth condition that causes him to have a weak heart and a fragile body. One day while the narrator was outside trying to teach Doodle how to swim, they noticed a storm heading their way. The narrator and Doodle both got scared and started running. Due to Doodle's conditions, he could no longer keep up with his brother and fell behind. The narrator noticed that …show more content…

His lonely death shows how betrayal can lead to horrible outcomes. Second, in “My Brothers Keepers”, Ted, the oldest brother and rich football player, always depends on his younger brother Jaime for his mistakes. Ted ends up committing a crime by hitting someone with his car. Instead of helping them out, it was a hit-and-run. He’d lose everything if he went to prison. So, he asks his brother to give him an alibi in court. Jaime is conflicted because he has to choose between his spotless reputation or his brother's life. Soon enough, Jaime chooses to be selfish and decides to tell the truth about Ted's misdoings.The narrator expresses “Jaime knew he could never again be his brother's keeper” (Bennet 30). Jaime showed an extreme amount of betrayal by choosing his reputation over his own brother's life. Lastly, in Of Mice and Men, George is told to kill his best friend, basically his brother. Lennie has an intellectual disability, and he doesn't really know right from wrong. Lennie accidentally kills a woman at the ranch. In order for George to have a life after Lennie's killing and so that nobody else kills Lennie by making him suffer, he would have to kill Lennie. So he

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At a young age Doodle wants to go with his brother everywhere: “To discourage him coming with me, I’d run with him across the ends of the cotton rows and carren him around corners on two wheels” ( Hurst 465). When Doodle was five, his older brother was embarrassed with having a brother you could not walk. So he helped his brother learn, after a few weeks of trying to stand up. On Doodle’s sixth birthday he walked: “That Doodle only walked because I was ashamed of having a crippied brother” (468). After that, he wants to teach Doodle to swim and climb but before they can do that a storm comes.

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Embarrassment was the one element which motivated the narrator to faithful in Doodle. The use of indirect characterization is clearly visible through the show of pride from the narrator to Doodle. Later on, when the two brothers headed of to Horseshead Landing to train Doodle, for he had “long way to go if he was going to keep up with the other boys”. In the middle of skiffing, a massive rainstorm was approaching them, requiring to fled the site. Both the brother one a foot step ahead and the other trying to keep up.

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